Tuesday, November 10, 2009

If I Had To Schedule A Kids' Network

What if there was a kids' network that was programmed by someone who actually liked you? If I was a kid, I would want cartoonists to schedule network programming for sure, (instead of psychologists, lawyers and market research biddies) since we are just big kids ourselves and still watch cartoons and puppet shows and play with toys.

Network Schedule

Weekdays:

Early Morning

Little kids get up early before school starts and they need some entertainment.During this block, we will schedule the cartoons that aim at the youngest viewers.

The shows we pull from will be mostly TV cartoons from the 50s and 60s.

We will age up the shows as it gets nearer 8:00

------------------------------------------------

5:45 am Official Pre-Cartoon Wait

This is a throwback to the 60s early morning schedule.Before the cartoons came on, us little kids would have to wait through boring stuff for a seeming eternity. This wait would make the cartoons so much sweeter when they finally came on.

We will make fun of this 15 minutes of torture by running stuff like:The Indian Head with an annoying tone playing in the background

Farm reportBowling For DollarsBingo

Or:

MR. WAIT

This show stars a man peeking from behind a desk with a big clock behind him.The clock is named “Mr. Wait”The top of the man's head is named "Truancy Glare"His lips are called "Purple Heed"

As far as we know the lips and forehead are not attched because we never see them at the same time.

Mr. Wait ticks and ticks and the second hand moves slower as the forehead behind the desk drones on about things you can do while you wait for the wonderful cartoon shows that are like ice cream painted on your eyes.

We cut back to the clock for a 5 second countdown, 5,4,3,2..........1. A planet teeming with life explodes on screen and then the real cartoons start!The kids go crazy!

6:00 – 6:30 - Cartoon Cereal Serials and Shorts

a) Serial

Every day from Monday to Friday we will run a serialized cartoon strip from the 50s or 60s.Ruff’ 'N’ ReddyClutch CargoColonel BleepTom TerrificEtc.

Each of these series were made of 5 minute episodes that ended with a cliffhanger. There would be anywhere from 10-20 episodes of these serials.The kids have to watch every day to find out how the story ends.

b) Short TV cartoons that weren’t part of half hour shows, like:

Dodo The Kid From Outer SpaceHerculesRoger RamjetLippy The Lion and Hardy HarHar

The Lineup After the Early Morning Half Hour:

Monday

6:30 Deputy Dawg7:00 Super Six7:30 Tom and Jerry

Tuesday

The FlintstonesAlvin and The ChipmunksHeckle and Jeckle

Wednesday

The JetsonsBozoFox and Crow and Friends

Thursday

Magilla GorillaAstroboyHarveyToons

Friday

Top CatMighty HeroesWoody Woodpecker with Walter Lantz

------------------------------------------------

Lunch Hour

Secret Cartoon Club:This is a live-action wraparound for a show that features assorted short syndicated cartoons or some new ones.

The show opens with a wobbly hand held camera coming up to a door with a little closed peep slot.Above the peep slot is a sign: “Secret Cartoon Club. No Grownups Allowed” scrawled in childlike lettering.

The camera stops and a little fist raises up into scene to knock on the doorRap rap rap

The little panel opens and we see eyes peering down at the kid who knocked.“What’s the password?”“Immaturity!”The door opens and the kid is let into a secret room in a run down clubhouse.There are folding chairs in the middle of the room.

Kids dressed in 50s type clothes are sitting in the chairsStriped shirts, Beany caps, Jughead hatsGirls in frilly dresses with chocolate smears on their faces

There is also a live duck with a striped shirt sitting on one of the chairsThe duck's master on another.This is the cartoon audience.

There is a raised stage with an old screen.

A Projector starts up and runs the cartoons.

Every day we do gags in the live set about how important it is to keep this whole club secret.

Half way through the episode an alarm goes off and we realize that this is a grownup

The kids capture him and lead him to the punishment chamber

The Secret Cartoon Club Of The FutureOne day we have a contestOne of the kids wins and the prize is:He gets to travel to a million years in the futureEverything we know of is gone, except the secret cartoon club, because there will always be a need for cartoonsA giant brain projects cartoon films directly into the minds of kids

83 comments:

I remember being really little and getting up early on Sundays to watch Hanna-Barbera Tom & Jerry cartoons (and occasionally the odd 60's era ones like 'Dicky Moe") and having to always sit through the tail end of the Oral Roberts show first. The evil clock would have been much, much better...

I would totally put my kids in front of the channel you're talking about.

The suspicious men would be rip offs of Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, and after all the kids would laugh and laugh at Looney Tunes, the Ollie and Frank dressed like kids would tell them:

"Oh those cartoons are funny here on the west coast but those Dalt Wisney cartoons are much more popular and enjoyed in the middle states where the best Americans live. Scientists have proved that watching a Dalt Wisney cartoon is equal to one serving of broccoli and cauliflower."

It's too hard to get a real TV channel on TV, so just create a TV channel online.

Start out by putting on whatever you can get for free, like your friends' old student films and home movies, streaming in an endless loop. There should be no option to watch what you want at will, just like an actual old TV ... Then maybe you could get the rights to play Ruff 'n' Ready or Crusader Rabbit for $1 or something ... Then slowly work your way up to adding all the stuff you have on this awesome schedule.

This would be like a dream come true John. I'm 20 years old, and I grew up watching many of these. I remember a certain amount of time where there were were schedule blocks until TV networks decided to boot them all to Boomerang! I think Boomerang is a cool channel, but it doesn't offer that classic feeling and excitement of the old blocks. Nickelodean used to be great too. What happened?!

After the 90s, it seems like cartoons died. It'd be great to see some of your work reach a kids network block as well!

If only, sir, if only....those programs were and are GOLDEN and I find myself salivating at the mere idea of you doing new cartoons, whether for a network or anywhere else. I REALLY enjoy the blog.Thanks-Garry L. Todd

John, i just posted a lengthy study of Kaspar in which i've tried to break down the hierarchical method of approaching the drawing. I'd really appreciate if you'd take a look - i think i'm going in the right direction & i think it's working...

^_^ I wish you had a site that can feature programming like this. It would be so fun! I miss your Spumco site. I miss the Spumco Lodge. There's gotta be a business model someone can help you come up with that would generate enough revenue for your own "Hulu" to become a reality. Any luck on finding a volunteer web designer to get you started?

Another brilliant post. When I was a kid we only had three channels, but this stuff was pretty much the schedule. I can remember the wait. We had the test pattern, then the corncob report (after all, we kids had to know what herfords were selling for)every TV station had a local cartoon show host, sometimes with puppets. Now that would be a good character, a local cartoon TV show host. Thanks for the post, it stimulated thoughts. Please come and visit.

Shoot!! In one of my live events I was planning to do something dangerously close to that pre-cartoon wait in basic concept and intent. Even the music (Java)! But boy did I ever get outdone. Now whatever I pull off is going to look like a lame ripoff of what you posted here.

In other words it's right after my own heart. Especially the weirdness of Mr. Wait and the random boring things like the farm report.

Wow! That's the TV I grew up with.I miss that Indian head test pattern. So last year I snagged it off of a site. I noticed one of the toys in the ad, with the cartoon kid, is Tennessee Tuxedo (Don Adams). I grew up in Toronto, So With the Buffalo TV stations, that's what TV was like. Thanks, John.

Just popped into my head: I picture the rabbit rotting away to reveal a shifting scary face that, in a croaky voice, names the network's underwriters. Or recites the whole TV sign-on spiel. "WGXB-TV is owned and operated by Broadcast Inc., transmitting from an antenna located on Mt. Mansfield at 325 kilowatts..."

but if u had that whole 15 minutes of Mr Wait, the angry clock, technical difficulties and the cut aways at 5:45 in the morning; for some reason id imagine that would aggravate the kids and theyd be yelling at the tv etc, in the lust for cartoons. Caffeine deprived parents would wake up to this storm of early morning thunder, leading to an increase in smacked bottoms.

Here in Australia on the new channel GO they actually run hours of Hanna-Barbera cartoons daily

John, this brings back long-buried memories. I wondered if I was the only kid on my block impatiently watching test patterns and weather or farm reports before the 6:00 a.m. onslaught of much-anticipated black and white Looney Tunes!

I personally would lobby for some Jay Ward cartoons in the 1960's blocks and Fleischer Studio classics within the Thursday Harveytoons time slot.

no george liquor ren and stimpy ripping friends or betty boop or benie and cecil or dexter's lab? all great shows that you would have but it seems like there are plenty more classics this channel would need.Although it does sound amazing as is too

Mr. K, this post is amazing- it actually gave me that fuzzy, bouncing, sparky feeling of excitement. The kind that lives deep in your belly and usually only surfaces around Christmas when you're under 12. There's got to be a producer-exec out there Somewhere who can see the importance of magic!Also I second the guy who said that little girls love Betty Boop.

This sounds great John, I remember when Cartoon Network in England used to show all those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Once they showed a whole week of nothing but the Flintstones, it was the best! I remember when they started showing other cartoons again that I still wanted to watch the Flintstones. Haha!

We also had a show called Rolf's cartoon club, where Rolf Harris would teach you how to draw all the cartoon characters and then show the cartoons that he'd just taught you how to draw. And then at the end he would paint a huge picture on the wall, his catchphrase was ''Can you tell what it is yet?'' Which he would always say when he was painting it. It was great.

Wow! Great line-up! If I were you'd include animated movies of the week and an action cartoon block, too. You could show Jonny Quest, Astro Boy, Gigantor, Speed Racer, Space Ghost, Birdman, Batman: The Animated Series, etc...

Man, you sure have a lot of ideas for this, John. I can totally see this happening. If it really happened, it would probably be the best thing on television in this age of mediocrity.

I pretty much gave up watching television for how dull it's gotten lately. If this were a real channel, this would introduce children today of the good stuff we were raised on in the 20th Century, & I would love to watch it myself.

It would be very easy to make a website that could run programming live 24 /7 without too much initial investment. Tom Green does a live show from his house every night at 8, and when he's off the air, he broadcasts best-of packages.

But he's in the same boat you are, John. He can't make money.

Maybe you could do like Soleil was suggesting and make the programming free and get money from advertising on the site as well as the programs. Or maybe you could show old cereal and toy commercials by companies and products who are still in business and use that to generate ad revenue as well as catering to the retro crowd.

This is a cool idea, but families do not watch TV like they did in the 50's anymore. Television programming as we know it is being phased out. The fact that you didn't know what Hulu was shows that you're not in touch with modern viewing habits. TV is going towards a paradigm that put's the control of programming in the hands of the viewer. Parents are becoming more likely to throw in a DVD or DVR'd episode of their child's favorite show rather than tune into a channel and let their kids watch whatever is on. Soon, most if not all programming will be available "on demand". Parents will create a playlist of shows for their kids to watch. I suggest you collaborate with someone who can help you translate your vision to work with where entertainment and technology is going and not where it was decades ago.

Their is only one thing missing from your Channel, a little actionI could never understand what the deal with Tom and Jerry; it's just like road runner and coyote, only boring. when ever there was some thing on TV made William Hanna and Joseph Barbera if would turn on the v.c.r and put my Lonny Tunes collections, or my chuck Jones jungle book tape... or a tape of Terminator or die Hard! every thing was better then that boring cat and mouse.If there would be a channel really meant for kids this couple shouldn't lay a paw in it.

Good luck John and I mean your going to need a lot of it these days to realize your vision. The television industry is to over invested in the internet video and on-demand market and the tivo program these days. I have to strongly agree with Brian that families and companies are finding alternatives.

The early morning programming blocks have been replaced by shows that are quickly moved to the internet or on demand market after airing. Its great your trying to reverse that.

However the executives of most networks including Fox, Cartoon Network, Disney, and "your old pals" at Nickolodean *joking* have abandoned the early morning market.

This is because they feel that people are spending more time elsewhere than watching re-runs that you can never get sick of.

Blammo Joe had a consistently creative mind that I think we all wish we could have. I think he is a pioneer in television marketing that set the standard even today. That's why H&B has produced one of the largest outputs of cartoons in animation history.

You are right John. Unfortunately network execs are like music execs. Trying to squeeze money from a dying system rather than focusing on how to make something new that entertains, gives consumers control and makes the execs a crap load of money. I guess asking for execs with vision is too much. Heh-heh.

dude, no kid wants to watch the flintstones. say what you like about the designs and the colour palettes (which are nice), it's terribly animated and it ISNT funny. maybe it was in simpler times - like the middle ages - but it just sucks. same goes for topcat.

No kid wants to see the Flinstones? There are a lot of artists that weren't alive to see the original Flinstones including me. The show none the less has still influenced me and younger groups of artists heavily we have fallen in love with the nostalgic feel of it.

The flintstones is not dated by a certain time. Its a timeless classic. John K. wasn't alive to see Bob Clampetts tenure at Warner Bros. yet it has influenced his style and characters.

Kids from later generations can be influenced by work that took place years before they were of age. Some things remain timeless.

I think at night you could run all of those really old, baffling, backwards, and off-brand cartoons (like the foreign Tom and Jerrys, or Famous Studios cartoons). I've gotten a lot of my friends who aren't cartoon buffs to find those hysterical.

You should take over Boomerang! You could banish all that Scooby Doo nonsense.

[dude, no kid wants to watch the flintstones. say what you like about the designs and the colour palettes (which are nice), it's terribly animated and it ISNT funny. maybe it was in simpler times - like the middle ages - but it just sucks. same goes for topcat.]

Good stuff, John, but what would you schedule for the crucial Saturday afternoon slot? Back in the the day, that was about as big a deal as Saturday mornings, especially if it was raining outside.

In my opinion, what is sorely needed is old-school monster movies, preferably in hosted, double-feature form. Kids need to see ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THEM, FORBIDDEN PLANET, THE WOLF MAN, GODZILLA VS THE THING, WAR OF THE WORLDS, etc, as an important part of this complete breakfast!

Or maybe "THE MYSTERY MOVIE JACKPOT THEATRE":

Kids file into a screening room, where a goofy emcee in a tux with a loud tie, and wearing coke-bottle glasses, addresses them in front of a big screen. On the walls are painted movie posters promising "Laughs! Thrills! Adventure!".

The host picks a different kid out of the group each week to step up and do the honors, throwing the lever. This activates a big slot machine display on the screen with spinning tumblers, featuring random images of actor faces, monsters, animals, etc.

What will the movie be... ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS? TARZAN IN THE VALLEY OF GOLD? THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET? TARANTULA?

Three Kirk Douglases means they get to see TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA or THE VIKINGS. Three lemons means PIPPILONGSTOCKING or ALAKAZAM THE GREAT.

The kid who throws the lever gets the praise or blame from his peers over the fun quotient of the flick, either winning a cool prize (somehow related to the movie) at the end of the show, or some harmless punishment (ditto), as fate is fickle and often cruel.

There are 80 two-reelers in all, none of them made any later than 1938 - that's over seventy years ago for chrissakes! - and they've seen each one multiple times and love them all. Now, whenever I talk to them I have to answer a slew of questions about Our Gang comedies. (They also love Three Stooges, Fleischer Popeyes, classic Tom & Jerry, Tex Avery Droopy cartoons and Looney Tunes. They watch 'em all on DVD, 'cause they ain't on television.)

If I tried telling that to a stupid hippie executive, I'd get a song and dance about "stereotypes" and "sexist roles" and "kids hate b&w film", etc. etc, ad nauseum...

When I attempted to explain some of the dated caricatures of the past and some other "creaky" aspects of early talkies to them - and got stopped cold. "We KNOW all that, Uncle Mike. We're not dumb!"

Well, they sure aren't, but TV executives think they are. Maybe their kids are stupid, but average American kids aren't.

This is a great Idea all around! But I especially like the morning programming. Secret Cartoon Club's really great too. In the 80s I use to wake as early as I could every school day to wait for The Mighty Hercules to come on CBC. I'd wait for the colour bars to change to some video of a guy climbing a transmission tower to the theme of O Canada. Then i'd get really excited cause that meant Hercules would be on soon!

In the US there are something like "contestable" funds? Down here (Chile) there are at least 3 parties (The TV council, the 'Production Development Corporation' and 'National fund for Cultural Development and Arts') that give funds to independent projects each year. Lot of good stuff have emerged from that.

A while ago a bunch of kids put together a very interesting online tv station that I have been watching for a few years.

gbs.tv

It's deliciously irrelevant and random, bunch of old stuff, old cartoons old tv ads and video archives of weird science experiments from the 1940's, strange drive-in intermissions, and all sorts of cool stuff like that, mixed in with ridiculous (but usually short) stuff from the internet. No choosing, it streams and you watch.

It's random and can get crappy at times but it's usually pretty interesting.

Anyway my point is,it probably isn't that expensive to set up, if a bunch of kids did it. I'm sure you could find a way to do something like that for cheap, with your idea of a programming schedule instead of the random stuff, and get your blog readers to draw attention to it.

I guess it would be hard to get it sponsored at first, but once you get a good following on it - and I'm sure you would - it could gradually become a legitimate internet broadcaster.

The main thing to watch out for would be the executives who would come in when the channel achieves success and show their business acumen by commanding you to fit their vision. You would be become their great scourge and your viewers would wait with bated breath for you to triumph.